When you’re a working parent, it can be tricky to maintain a good work life balance, but it helps if you can bend your schedule to work better for your kids’ schedule.

Imagine going into work a little early every day so that you could leave a little early every day.

Then one manager complains that you’re working early.

Would you ignore the manager or prove to him how valuable it is to have an employee start work early?

The working mom in today’s story chooses the second option.

Let’s see how the story plays out.

Work starts at 8:30 and ends at 5:30? Okay.

When I was little, my mum worked for SEGA and would spend half of her time at work whilst we were with my nan, which wasn’t the best set up but had to be done.

To try and combat this, my mum would come into work early at 8:00am, and start working (despite the fact she was only contracted from 8:30am onwards) and leave around 4:50pm/5:00pm, to get home earlier and spend time with us.

This wasn’t ideal for my mums manager Nigel.

Even though every other boss has agreed that my mum was still making the hours and doing more work than was expected, Nigel didn’t like it, stating that “We pay you to work 8:30am to 5:30pm, nothing different.”

His mom did things differently the next morning.

Here’s where the malicious compliance comes into play.

My mum strolls into work the next day, 8:00am on the dot still.

Instead of doing work, and answering phones like she used too, she sits there, drinks her tea and reads the newspaper.

As time passes, more phone are ringing and causing a bit of commotion, but hey!

She’s not being paid until 8:30am right?

By the time 8:15am/8:20am comes around, Nigel appears out of his office, asking around as to why phones aren’t being answered.

Him mom explained why she wasn’t answering the phones.

Sure enough, he makes his way to my mums desk, where she is just sitting and enjoying her early morning.

After questioning why she isn’t doing any work, my mum gives the response I stated earlier – “Nigel, yesterday you exclaimed I’m not being paid until 8:30am. So, I will work when it gets to 8:30am.”

And she did.

She let those phones continuously ring without an answer for a couple of days until Nigel came around, and decided that MAYBE her previous set up of working early and leaving a little earlier was better.

It turns out it was helpful to have someone start work a little early!

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person appreciates early birds.

A manager weighs in.

Another person has tried and failed at this type of malicious compliance.

And here’s some praise for the mom.

She proved him wrong!

But he still probably didn’t learn a lesson.

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.